Jean Daniel

Jean Daniel Bensaid (21 July 1920 – 19 February 2020) was a French journalist and author. He was the founder and executive editor of Le Nouvel Observateur weekly now known as L'Obs.

Daniel was born in Blida, Algeria, as the youngest of 11 children. His father, Jules Bensaid, was a flour miller. Jean Daniel attended the University of Algiers before the Second World War. During the war, he was part of a resistance group that aided the liberation of Algiers, and he participated in the Normandy landings as part of the Free French forces led by Philippe Leclerc. Following the war, Daniel attended Sorbonne University (studying philosophy) and worked for Félix Gouin as a speechwriter.

Daniel was a Jewish humanist in the tradition of the French Left. He was a colleague and friend of Albert Camus, a fellow pied-noir (French-Algerian). In La prison juive: Humeurs et méditations d'un témoin (The Jewish Prison), Daniel argued that prosperous, assimilated Jews in the west live in a self-imposed prison made of up of three invisible walls: the idea of the Chosen People, Holocaust remembrance, and support for Israel. "Having trapped themselves inside these walls...," wrote Adam Shatz in describing the book, "they were less able to see themselves clearly, or to appreciate the suffering of others -- particularly the Palestinians living behind the 'separation fence'."